Darbhanga, June 22: Waking up from slumber after a year, Lalit Narayan Mithila University (LNMU) authorities realised they have been paying the varsity assistants much more than their pay scale. Now, the university has decided to rectify the anomaly.

Around 328 employees in the grade of assistants were getting salaries between Rs 5,500 and Rs 9,000 from March 2010. Now, their scale would be between Rs 4,000 and Rs 6,000. It would be effective from March this year.

The varsity assistants continued to get the inflated salary till February this year.

The registrar of LNMU, Bimal Kumar, told The Telegraph: “We came to know about the excessive salary payments made to university assistants for the past one year when the issue of salary was discussed at a meeting of representatives of all universities held in Patna on June 9.”

Kumar said: “The management of the university was not aware of the enhanced salaries the employees were getting till the meeting in the state capital.”

Sources said the university was solely responsible for paying additional money to its assistants for a year. They added that nobody bothered to cross-check the pay scale of the varsity assistants for over a year and it was all by chance that the anomaly was spotted.